Anticancer chemotherapy agents are the drugs with the most restrictive therapeutic window. In fact, since their cytotoxic activity is non-selective, they can indiscriminately damage all the cells of the body with which they come into contact.
Over the past twenty years uterine cancers, the term including both cervical and endometrial carcinoma, have become the most frequent pelvic cancers in women. Surgery is the treatment of choice in most patients. The use of chemotherapy is generally confined to the treatment of metastatic or advanced disease. The chemotherapeutic agents commonly prescribed for the treatment of uterine cancers are characterised by a fairly low positive response level, ranging typically from 20% to 35%. There is therefore still a perceived need to identify an anticancer drug capable of yielding a higher positive response rate and at the same time presenting fewer side effects or at least to a more tolerable extent. 7-terbutoxyiminomethylcamptothecin (CPT184 or ST 1481 or gimatecan) is an orally active camptothecin derivative and is described in European Patent EP 1 044 977, where its activity on the non-small-cell lung cancer cell line is specified, and uterine cancers are not mentioned.